Set for April 22 is an Earth Day cleanup event at Jean Klock Park in Benton Harbor. Carol Drake with the Friends of Jean Klock Park tells us everyone’s invited to come and help pick up trash in coordination with the Alliance for the Great Lakes’ Adopt-a-Beach program. Drake says she’s been holding the local events since 2004 with volunteers collecting thousands of unnatural items from the beach. She says it’s interesting to watch the trends.
“We find a lot of interesting items, but probably the most interesting to me were the nurdles that washed up several years ago, which are small pellets of plastic that are used to injection molds for plastic,” Drake said. “They’re just tiny little beads in all different colors. Once they washed up, they have been here forever and we continue to find hundreds and hundreds of them every year.”
Every year, thousands of volunteers participate in cleanups across all five Great Lakes. Drake says the event at Jean Klock Park will run from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on the 22nd and is the first they’ve been able to have since 2019. Those who take part will record what they collect so it can be reported to the Alliance for the Great Lakes. You can register right here. Bring gloves.
